What’s Current: Canada’s women’s shelters overwhelmed amid surge in domestic violence; staff shortages

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  • Canada’s women’s shelters are overwhelmed due to increased demand, escalating domestic violence, and staff shortages. The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability reports that femicides have spiked during the pandemic, with over 90 women and girls murdered in the first half of 2021.
  • Twitter accounts that were reported for abusing high-profile women went on to continue their campaign of harassment, research reveals. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit group, which conducted the research, said that Twitter’s failure to remove such accounts was “enabling and encouraging abusers to spew hate again”.
  • An Indonesian woman in Aceh has been flogged 100 times for the crime of “adultery” while the man involved was flogged 15 times. Aceh is the only region of Indonesia to impose sharia law.
  • A boy who has been at the center of controversy surrounding gender identity policies in Loudoun County’s school district of Virginia has been sentenced in the sexual assault of two girls at two separate high schools. One incident took place in the girl’s restroom. The boy will be placed on a sex offender registry for life.
Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve Gluck is a writer and advocate for women's sex-based rights and creator of Women's Voices, an audio library dedicated to bringing awareness to feminist texts and speeches.